


Half-Told

by moemachina



Category: The Innkeeper's Song
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:03:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moemachina/pseuds/moemachina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A well-told story tunes the audience as a musician tunes an instrument: we begin skeptical and slack, and then we are slowly tightened and released until we are in perfect pitch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Half-Told

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Minnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minnow/gifts).



  


**I.**  


The wine was almost the worst part. I have had viler stuff -- have I ever told you about the fermented mare’s milk they drink in the northern steppes? -- but not much viler. I do not know where the proprietor found this vintage, but I can only assume that if he ever grew tired of keeping an inn, he could go into paint removal. That or poisoning.

No, the wine was not the worst part, even though I drank nearly two bottles of it in the two hours that I spent in that inn’s central courtyard. In other circumstances, I suppose I might have enjoyed myself; the weather was sweet and cool, and the rising twilight softened the lines of the old building into something approaching loveliness. If I squinted, I could see what the innkeeper had been thinking when he had decided to make an inn out of the building. No, I don’t know what it was originally -- probably a home for some patrician family, now dead so long that no one remembers to light smoke in memory of their name or their clan-crypt -- but every building in that city had been inhabited and abandoned and made into something new a dozen times since the original foundations were laid. Every couple of generations, a new group of barbarians come storming over the walls with fire, but the greater part of the city is made of stone, and it endures. It may take different forms, but it endures.

The innkeeper may have had high hopes of the customers he would attract with the place -- merchants and young lordlings and other svelte simpletons without the experience to realize how terrible the wine was. If so, those hopes had not been realized. From my seat, I could see the innkeeper standing in the doorway to the kitchens, surveying the torchlit courtyard in unhappy confusion. To my left was a table full of men wearing the toque of the western mercenaries. To my right was a woman with one eye that I recognized; I was glad that she did not recognize me. Somewhere behind me, I could hear someone humming an old slaver’s song, over and over again.

The company was not the worst part either -- I have had worse company, and I have been worse company myself -- but a room full of mercenaries, assassins, and thieves did nothing to improve my mood or the taste of my wine. In the doorway, the innkeeper kept frowning in consternation, and I could read the question in his head. _What brought all these ruffians and scalliwags to my door? Was it something to do with the new Tyrant?_ (In a certain sense, yes, I could have told him.) _Was it something to do with the wine?_ (No, sir, not in the least.) _Or was it the new story-teller?_

The worst part was the story-teller. No, wait, to be fair, it was not the story-teller herself -- an entirely unobjectionable moon-faced girl -- but the story she was telling. It was a story known to nearly every child who has ever heard a bed-time tale. It was a story I could have told in my sleep and told with such spins and feints that you would not have recognized it until its final glorious moments. It was a story that you could have told -- yes, even you -- in a standard sturdy shape, half-distracted as you threshed wheat or spun wool or cast your nets into the sea, and I would have still applauded at the end. Such is the strength of the story.

The story-teller was telling this story, and she was telling it terribly. Anyone could tell that she was telling it badly; a child could have told you that, and the innkeeper was no child. Instead, he nervously plucked the edge of the doorway and watched the inexplicable crowd in his courtyard and wondered what he would do when the fighting started, because the audience was growing restless.

The story-teller was deaf to the rhythm of the story; she missed the comic beats or the tragic breaks. A well-told story tunes the audience as a musician tunes an instrument: we begin skeptical and slack, and then we are slowly tightened and released until we are in perfect pitch.

The story-teller paused at the wrong points and rushed through the parts she should have emphasized and belabored unimportant points. It would have been painful to anyone -- it would have been painful to _you_ \-- but I was raised to have the most refined sensibilities when it came to stories. Every word she uttered was like the flick of a whip; I flinched at every fumbled line.

Even so, to interrupt her was inexcusable. I can only blame the wine, that terrible wine, and my own terrible arrogance, and my recognition of the woman with one eye. I acted with the best of intentions and even so, my interruption cannot be forgiven.

“It was the shepherd’s mother.” By the time I recognized the voice as my own, I was already putting down my wine glass and climbing to my feet, with one hand on my swordcane. “It was the shepherd’s mother, and not his wife, which is why she wanted the amulet.”

The courtyard went silent, much more silent than it should have gone for a drunk woman heckling the story-teller, and the quiet sober part of me said _Ah, yes, that’s why they’re here. Careful, Lal, careful._

The loud drunk part of me continued, “And you’ve left out the part with the ogre.”

The story-teller’s face flushed red, and I could see her trying to decide whether to ignore me or acknowledge me.

“Ah,” she said, in a voice pitched high with stress, “but it was not long before the shepherd’s _wife_ heard tales of a fearsome _ogre_ , and she pleaded with her _husband_ to go forth and destroy the dread beast before he came for the amulet. And so her weary husband took down the talking sword and the magic shield, and he set forth to find the ogre.”

“He doesn’t have the magic shield any longer,” I said patiently. “He gave that up for the amulet, remember?” She had also failed to stress the bargain that the shepherd has made with the talking sword, which is supposed to add _pathos_ and irony to this part of the story, but I decided to overlook that point for the moment. Besides, I had something in mind now. I won’t lie and say that I had it in mind originally, but I had a plan by then, and I let my hand slide away from my swordcane. A good story-teller can improvise.

“Um, the magic shield, yes,” the story-teller said rapidly. “But he took the talking sword and went into the badlands and there he found the ogre and then--”

“The badlands of the far reaches stretch all the way to the base of the Lunula mountains, and you would be dead long before you reached it,” I said, pitching my voice to reach the upper balconies ringing the courtyard. “It is a place inhospitable even to ogres, and yet _this_ ogre had chosen this place, far from its kin, for its nest. Ogres are lonely folk, and this ogre was lonelier than most.”

A good story-teller can play her audience like an instrument. I could feel the people in the courtyard stirring restlessly, reaching for their weapons and counting the number of exits from the courtyard, but I could also feel a question, a curiosity, a strummed chord. They weren’t mine, not yet, but the possibility was there.

Unfortunately, they were not my prey. The story-teller’s brown eyes narrowed, and she straightened in her seat. In that moment, I liked her slightly more.

“Lonely? No, the ogre had been driven from his people for his sins,” she said. “He was exiled for...for murder and cannibalism and destruction and...other crimes too bloody to be spoken aloud.”

There was no need to enumerate the ogre’s crimes -- better to be suitably vague and leave those details to the audience’s fertile imagination -- but the idea was sound: expanding on the ogre’s tragic dimensions without diminishing his terror. It was not the most creative or profound choice, you understand, but as a hook to hold one’s audience, it was more than adequate.

“And yet,” I said, “ogres themselves are a bloody and murderous people, a people of vengeance and long-lived memory, and yet they chose only to exile this ogre. Such was the fear and the love in which they held him. And so he went into the badlands, where he had only the rocks and the wind for company.”

I took a step forward -- which was a mistake, and I can only blame the wine again for dulling my wits. The audience had been willing to be intrigued by me, but that step made them pause and blink at me and reach again for their weapons. I felt their trust in the story waver like a soap bubble. I squared my shoulders and my hands flickered to the handle of my swordcane.

And then someone started speaking from the upper balcony. “It was the shepherd’s sword who told him how to find the ogre.” I looked up -- everyone looked up -- at the figure standing at a second-floor railing. He was wearing white netting from the brim of his hat, and he had pitched his voice to sound old and querulous, but I knew him anyway.

How? I don’t know. It is the way he stands or the angle of his shoulder, maybe There was another time, when I recognized him from the deck of a ship on fire -- but no, that is another story. I will tell it later, maybe. Suffice it to say that I recognized him. I was not precisely glad to see him, but I was not sorry either.

“How did the sword know how to find this ogre?” I called out, because I am not ungenerous, and I know the proper role of a listener, even if no one else in this courtyard did. Plus, I figured that if Soukyan kept talking, I would be able to sidle unobtrusively up to the story-teller.

“The talking sword could find anything,” Soukyan said, and despite his carefully controlled voice, I could hear his irritation and affection. He knew me very well, and he was not precisely glad to see me either. “The shepherd had been using it to find the missing members of his flock, which the talking sword considered to be a sad misuse of its talents. It was relieved when the shepherd wanted to find the ogre, for this seemed like a more fitting use of its powers.”

The acoustics of the courtyard were not bad; I could hear Soukyan clearly, and I knew my own voice reverberated throughout the space. It was well-designed, and I could imagine that long-dead patrician family having feasts with long poetic recitals there, on the tiles laid above the clan-crypt.

Yes, yes, I think it is fair to say that the rest of the crowd in the inn’s courtyard were very confused by this point, but they were still waiting to see what would happen, for clearly _something_ would happen. And besides, the story -- a story known to nearly every child who has ever heard a bed-time tale -- had a soothing effect on them, as if the crowd was a nervous animal whose fur was being quietly stroked. It would not hold, not for long, but it did not need to hold for long.

The story-teller was ten steps away.

The story-teller was not going to surrender her story without a fight. “So the shepherd set forth with the talking sword and the amulet,” she said in a loud voice that barely quavered at all. “And he journeyed to the Badlands, where he found the ogre--”

“--who promptly ate him,” I said.

No, no, I agree, it was terrible of me, and I can only defend myself by saying that I felt the audience wavering again and, from the corner of my eye, I saw the red-eyed woman start to withdraw a dagger from her boot. But my words stopped her dead, and now the entire courtyard was silent and straining to hear me.

No, _of course_ the shepherd doesn’t die, not in the version every child knows. I was improvising. Pay attention.

I was too far away to hear it, but I _felt_ Soukyan sigh with exasperation. There was no trace of that exasperation when he spoke, however. “Yes, the ogre ate him, and used the talking sword to clean his teeth. The ogre had no idea he was a talking sword, of course. The sword was smart enough not to talk in his presence, for as much as it had disliked finding sheep for the shepherd, it knew that it would dislike performing the ogre’s tasks even more.”

The story-teller was seven steps away. She opened her mouth, but I spoke before she could. “And so a month passed, and then another month, and the shepherd’s mother knew that he had died, for he would never have missed the shearing season if he had been alive. She was not a soft woman nor a warm woman, but she had loved her son as well as she was able, and she knew her duty. So she sold her flock of sheep to her neighbor, and she packed a bag with as much cheese and bread as she could carry, and she set off for the badlands, to find the amulet and bury her son and avenge his death.”

Soukyan leaned against the balcony. “She had not gotten a league before she reached the bank of a river and found a fish gasping on its shore. ‘Please,’ the fish said, ‘please throw me back into the river.’”

I rolled my eyes and took another step closer to the story-teller. Soukyan does not tell stories badly -- although there is no need to tell him I said that, it will just bloat his ego -- but he is incurably sentimental.

This time the story-teller managed to insert herself in the story. “ _Andsothewomanthrewhimbackintheriver_ ,” she said, all in a rush without a pause or breath. “And then the fish floated to the surface of the water and said, ‘Good woman, in exchange for your kindness, I will grant you one wish.’”

I take back what I said about Soukyan just now. Compared to this story-teller, he was a master of cool wit and dry understatement.

The story-teller paused for breath, and Soukyan struck. “And the woman said, ‘I wish for my son’s talking sword.’”

Five steps.

The story-teller jerked back. “But the fish was unable to bring her the sword, because--”

“--because he was sore afraid of the ogre. But the woman pressed and demanded and insisted, and finally the fish relented--”

“--but when he threw the sword up from the river, it refused to speak, and so was no good to the woman--”

“--but that was all right, for she was a patient woman, and able to wait out a stubborn sword--”

It reminded me of a story about the magical battle between the wizards Unijat and Tyimarr, but instead of transforming into different animals to eat one another or casting lighting bolts at one another, Soukyan and the story-teller were casting their story back and forth, trying to trip the other one up. Or at least the story-teller was trying to trip Soukyan up, but I could see the hesitation and surprise building up in her voice. I think she was used to solitary story-telling; I do not think she had ever tried to tell a story in collaboration with someone else, bouncing it back and forth as two children might bounce a ball.

It is a perilous thing, I could have told her, for then you surrender your control of the story, and only half the story is yours. If you pick the wrong partner, it can be catastrophic. There is nothing worse than a half-told tale.

Of course, with the right partner, it can be very different.

Three steps.

“--and now the sword spoke again,” Soukyan was saying, “the shepherd’s mother brought it into the badlands and found the ogre waiting for her.”

“But,” the story-teller started, but Soukyan was there first. “But they had both forgotten it,” he said. “They had both forgotten the amulet.”

The story-teller gaped at him like a dying fish, for she had forgotten the magical amulet. We had all forgotten it.

“And the amulet was the key to the ogre’s redemption,” I said, and I took the final steps to stand beside the story-teller. “The Tyrant has put a price on your head,” I told her, and the blood drained from her face.

I felt the room rise up in consternation; I felt the one-eyed assassin reaching into her boot; I felt the toque-wearing mercenaries rise from their table in one moment; I felt every person in that room start forward in that moment.

It was too late. I had my swordcane unsheathed, I had my arm around the story-teller, and I had pulled her away from her chair -- and if all these things did not happen simultaneously, they happened quick enough, for I pulled her away not a second before there was a dagger buried in the back of her chair, where the one-eyed woman had thrown it. She had more daggers, I knew -- more than a dozen -- and so I kept pulling the story-teller right along with one hand. My swordcane was in the other.

The one-eyed woman came for me, but I parried her sword, and in the same movement I dragged the story-teller away from a man with a top-knot and a scimitar. The one-eyed woman threw a dagger at me, and I dodged it. Then I hit her in the shoulder. She went down and came back up, but I wasn’t there anymore.

I suppose I could have fought everyone in that room and won. I was not in my prime, you understand, but I was still good, and I was still probably a match for anyone in that room. Probably.

But as it happened, I did not need to fight. Instead, I ran for the kitchen, pushing past the poleaxed innkeeper, and then I took a hard left, and the story-teller and I fell down a dusty flight of stairs.

That wasn’t part of my plan, you understand, but it was dark, and it could have happened to anyone. At any rate, I was pleased to find stairs so quickly -- I had hoped they might be back here, but I had not been sure. The perils of improvisation, you understand.

At any rate, I had the story-teller up and on her feet before the first of our pursuers were at the top of the stairs, and we were running down the corridor before they had reached the bottom. It was pitch-black but now that we were down in the lower level, I knew my way without light.

You see, these long-forgotten clan-crypts, built beneath every home of every long-forgotten patrician family, are all built along the same design. I knew when to turn left, and then turn left again, and before long, we had lost all sound of our pursuit. We had a small space of time before they found us again.

The story-teller was sobbing quietly beside me.

“Shush,” I said absently, reaching out to run my fingers against the wall. “You’re all right now.”

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked, and her voice was a little girl’s voice.

“What? No, of course not. If I was going to kill you, I would have killed you upstairs. Or let all those people up there kill you.” I found a hole in the wall, and I started poking it with the sheath of my swordcane.

“What...what are you going to do with me, then?”

“Bring you outside the city, I think. Then tell you to go home.” I felt some mechanism give from within the wall.

“Why?” she whispered.

“Help me push this,” I said. In its original construction, the door would have swung silently and impressively open at this point -- but it was old, and its gears were rusted, and it took a great deal of pushing against that door before the opening was wide enough for us to slide through, and we were both rather sweaty and breathless by the time we were done.

It was just as dark on the other side.

“Here, take my hand,” I said. With some fumbling, her hand found mine, and I led her into the dark.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“The center of the mausoleum,” I said.

She did not repress her gasp, not quite, but her next question was not the one I had predicted.

“What are we waiting for?”

“We are waiting for the man with the light,” I said. “Here, you might as well sit down. It make take a while.”

It took him slightly longer to find us than I thought it would, but in Soukyan’s defense, he had to dodge a homicidal horde in the outer corridors. They had brought torches down, but now the innkeeper was kicking up a fuss, and the city guard had been called, and none of them knew the first thing about ancient clan-crypt design, so they were wandering around at loose and purposeless ends. Soon they would begin to abandon the hunt. Even so, Soukyan went on a long, circuitous route to ensure that they could not follow him.

Even so, I was relieved when I heard his low whistle in the dark.

“It’s about time,” I called out.

“You needn’t have worried,” he said. “I remember this maze better than you do. Is your little fledgling at hand?”

“Have you come to kill her?” I asked, and I felt the story-teller stiffen beside me in panic.

There was a low, short laugh. “I am willing to surrender the job if you’ve decided to be her valiant protector, Lal. To tell the truth, I do not think much of the man who gave me the job. I have a low opinion of a man who will not show his face to the city he rules.”

“They say he has no nose,” I said.

“They say he has _two_ noses, my dear Lal.”

“He has one normal nose,” said the story-teller, and we both turned to look in the direction of her voice.

“You’ve seen his face,” Soukyan said, “and now he has decreed that you must die. Interesting.”

“Yes, interesting,” I said. “But for the moment, we must perfect our escape. Soukyan, this will be easier if you’ve brought a light.”

“Ah, Lal, what would you have done if I hadn't happened to be in that inn?”

“I would have improvised,” I said. “But I am glad to see you, Soukyan.”

“I am glad to see you as well, Sailor Lal.” I heard him fumbling with cloth, and then a pale blue light blossomed before me.

“Is this...magic?” the story-teller whispered.

Above the blue glow, Soukyan’s face grimaced. “Close. A type of fungus that grows luminescent when it is crushed. Will my hands do as torches, Lal?”

“For the lack of anything else,” I said. “Come and lead the way, faithful torch. There should be an air shaft in this direction.”

The story-teller was silent as we walked beside the bobbing blue light.

“You are wondering,” I said to her, “whether the Tyrant truly wants you dead.”

“He does,” Soukyan said. “Deader than dead. He wanted you cut into pieces, and every mercenary who returned with a pinky or an ear was guaranteed a gold piece in payment.”

“You are wondering,” I said, “if we could be mistaken.”

“Only if every man and woman in that courtyard was mistaken,” Soukyan said. “They were all there for you. They would have moved faster, any one of that lot, but all together, they made one another nervous. They waited to see who would move first.”

“You are wondering why the Tyrant wants you dead.”

“The fact that you know that he has a nose might have something to do with it.”

“You are wondering why the Tyrant chose to kill you in such a half-hearted way.”

The blue light paused a moment before it continued forward. “ _Was_ it half-hearted? He seemed fairly enthusiastic about the idea when I met him this morning. As enthusiastic as a monotone man in an iron mask can be, I mean.”

“The Tyrant is the ruler of the city; his power is formidable. He might have had you thrown into prison. He might have had you tried and hung for some obscure offense. He might have had you disappeared in the night. Yet he chose none of these methods. Instead, he invited a motley gang to kill you in an awkward and public manner, in a manner that was almost guaranteed to go wrong. You are wondering why.”

The story-teller sighed. “I am wondering why you helped me. Did someone ask you to protect me? How did you know that this would happen?”

“Because the Tyrant commanded me to kill you,” I said with some surprise. “As far as I can tell, he commanded every mercenary and cut-purse passing through the city at the moment. I was no exception.”

“And yet, here you are,” she said tentatively, “protecting me. Why?”

“I do not much like commands,” I said, and Soukyan snickered. “ And I do not much like being set to jobs that have been given to others as well; I find it messy. And most of all, I do not like being asked to kill someone when it is clear that the person asking me is hoping that I will fail. I do not like my abilities being doubted.”

“Was it _clear_?” Soukyan asked at the same time the story-teller said, “He has not changed.”

“Ah,” Soukyan and I said at the same time in the same voice.

“You grew up together,” I said, because it was as suddenly clear as day, as clear as a cliche.

“Children in the same village,” Soukyan said.

“A youthful romance among the lowing cows,” I said.

“You both left to make your way in the world,” Soukyan said.

“He became a warlord and then a prince and finally a Tyrant of the city.”

“You became a story-teller.”

“A fateful encounter. He recognized you. You recognized him.”

“He is conflicted. His childish love for you, and his horror of possessing any vulnerability or weakness.”

“He wants to eliminate you. At the same time, he doesn’t want that at all.”

“A half-hearted plan is hatched.”

“Was it something like that?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said reluctantly. “Something like that.”

“Here,” I said, “bring your hands over here, Soukyan, please. I think the air shaft should be...here.” I felt the cold breeze against the inside of my shirt collar.

“Where does this take us?” Soukyan asked.

“Past the gardens, I think. They won’t be looking for us there, not yet. Come, child,” I said to the story-teller, “up we go.”

There were stairs cut in the side of the shaft, and we wound our way upward in the blue light of Soukyan’s hands. The last few meters were a little problematic -- dirt and vines covered the opening, and I had to perform some savage poking with my swordcane before we were able to crawl into the open night air.

I instantly rolled to my feet with my swordcane drawn, but there was no one-eyed woman waiting for us, and the only sounds were normal city sounds: weeping, breaking glass, and imaginative cursing in the distance.

“Safe,” Soukyan said in disbelief.

“Safe,” I said smugly.

“What...what am I to do now?” the story-teller asked.

“You should leave this place,” I said. “Go back to the village of the lowing cows, or find another village with another set of cattle.”

“I will not go back there,” she said, and there was steel in her voice. “I have dedicated my life to the road and the world and...and telling stories.”

“You may not find it advisable to stay in this city,” Soukyan said at the same time I said, “ _Dedicated_ your life? What nonsense. Go tell your stories to the cows. Perhaps they will appreciate them.”

The story-teller drew herself up in the moonlight. “I promised him...we promised each other...that we would not go back. I begged and lie and stole when I was on the road, before I found someone who would teach me his stories, and it would dishonor my master -- it would dishonor every farmhouse from which I stole bread and milk -- it would dishonor _him_ if I gave that all up to return to the _cows_. No,” she said, “my life is the story. I do not care if he wants me dead. I will not abandon my vocation.”

All right, all right, so perhaps it was a little overblown -- but there was something in her voice, in her posture, in the line of moonlight on her face that suggested the potential that the girl’s former master might have seen in her. Even though I still think he performed an act of criminal negligence when he released her onto the world.

“There are other cities,” Soukyan said wearily. “You need not stir up the hornet’s nest here to tell your stories.”

“You should stress the bargain with the magic sword,” I said, and the other two turned to stare at me. “When you tell that story you were telling tonight, I mean. The whole story hangs on the shepherd’s relationship with the magic sword.”

“You killed the shepherd,” the story-teller said with real heat, and I started to laugh.

“Yes, well, the whole story might hang on the shepherd’s mother and the magic sword, I don’t know. I haven’t explored that story yet. But if you’re going to do this, this _vocation_ , then I expect devotion. And there are a million taverns in this city, and the Tyrant does not know them all, so I disagree with Soukyan: you needn’t leave, not unless you want to. But the stories, child. The stories need to be good. Don’t make me regret not killing you.”

“All right,” the story-teller whispered. “Thank you.”

We watched her walk in the direction of the city lights.

“And work on your voice control,” I shouted after her. “The voice should come from low in the chest!”

Soukyan was laughing.

“And the amulet! Don’t forget the amulet!”

“Lal, stop, enough, Lal,” Soukyan said, gasping for breath. “Let her go, let her go. She is beyond your help.”

“I just wish she wasn’t _quite_ so terrible,” I said. “Because there are hints of greatness in her awfulness. She is astounding, in some ways.”

“We should probably take your advice to her,” he said. “Not the voice control, I mean, but the leave-taking. The Tyrant is unlikely to be happy with you, once he discovers tonight’s events.”

“On the contrary, I expect he will be relieved,” I said. “I will be sure to ask him when I see him tonight.”

****

II.

Listen: of course I told her that she was crazy. It was the first thing I told her, and then I repeated variations on that theme, in case she had missed it the first time.

It didn’t do any good. You know Lal. She doesn’t like to leave things half-finished, and that goes for stories as well. It upsets her sense of the order of things.

“There is nothing worse than a tale half-told,” she said decisively.

As for me, I’m not sure. I can think of worse things than half a story. It depends on the half.

But, yes, we went and snuck into the Tyrant’s palace that night, because we are fools: me no less than she. I had been there that morning, when the Tyrant had invited me to a private meeting to discuss a little job for him. I suppose, in retrospect, that he had spent the morning in private meetings, but I had no inkling of his crowded schedule until I walked into that inn’s crowded courtyard. At the time, I had thought I was special; I had felt a smattering of pride at being singled out for my notoriety. More fool I.

There were guards, naturally, but they did not see us. I don’t mind saying that it was a pleasure to be working with Lal again. It was a pleasure to be working with someone who knew what she was doing, who walked past those guards as if they were smoke, and who knew me well enough to have faith that I was following her without ever turning her head to check.

We found the Tyrant sitting in a garden, watching a fountain burble and gurgle in the moonlight. He was wearing his famous iron mask, but despite that, his expression could be read in his elbows, his hip, his knee. Every joint in his body spoke of his misery.

“Hello, Lal,” he said without turning around.

Lal said nothing.

“You’ve returned,” he continued. “I did not expect you to return.”

Lal remained silent.

“Have you brought me an ear?” he asked. “Or a pinky?”

“I bring you nothing,” Lal said.

The Tyrant did not turn around.

“I suppose you loved her,” Lal said.

 _I suppose you_ did _love her_ , I thought.

“Yes,” the Tyrant, and his voice was a tremulous wail. “Yes, I loved her. That’s why I had to kill her.”

Lal said nothing for a moment, and then she said, “I suppose you met her here, in your court. I suppose you recognized her voice first.”

 _It was probably the hair or the forehead_ , I thought, _or the tilt of her nose that reminded you of a girl you had once known_ , but the Tyrant was saying, “Yes, yes, it was her voice, yes,” like a drowning man clawing for a rope.

“She reminded you of the promises you had made, of the future you had hoped to have.”

_She reminded you of cows and woolen mittens and stolen kisses beneath the apple tree. She reminded you of a past you threw away._

“You knew that, if she lived, your enemies would discover her and use her as a handle upon you.”

_You knew that she would look at you with those great cow-like eyes and make you applesauce the way that your mother once made it. You knew that she would remember how to make you cry._

“You loved her, but you knew that she could not live.”

_You dreaded her, and you prayed that she would disappear._

“And so you came to me and the others like me, and you commanded us to eliminate your heart for you.”

_You spent the day weeping behind your iron mask, hoping that we would fail, hoping that we would succeed._

“Tyrant,” Lal cried out sharply. “I need to know: _what happened then?_ ”

The Tyrant was silent.

“Did I succeed? Did I fail? Tell me, Tyrant.”

The Tyrant made a sound. It took me a moment to realize that he was crying.

“Tell me, Tyrant.”

The Tyrant said something, something so garbled that I could catch no sense of it, but Lal appeared grimly satisfied. “Very well,” she said. “I will go now, Tyrant. I hope, for your sake, that you will not seek to disturb me again.”

It took the Tyrant five minutes or more to summon his guard and send them after us, but by that time we were already running across the palace roof. It was a daring escape that would have come off perfectly if I hadn’t tripped and twisted my ankle.

As it was, we huddled on a parapet on the palace’s northern side and watched with interest as the guards searched for us on the grounds below.

“They’ll grow bored eventually,” I said.

“Mmm,” Lal said noncommittally.

“What do you think will happen to them?” I asked.

She did not ask to whom I referred. “I don’t know,” she said. “What do you think?”

“I think the Tyrant will slowly devour his heart with grief,” I said. “He’ll grow twisted and strange. He’ll dress in all black. He’ll get involved in pointless wars with neighboring kingdoms. Meanwhile, the story-teller will grow in stature and talent. One day, somehow, he hears about her. Goes wild and mad. Sends his soldiers to kill her. But then the common people find out, the common people who so love her stories about talking swords, and they rise up to protect her. Civil war. The city is rent and torn as bloody war rages in its streets.”

“Mmm,” Lal said.

“Or,” I said, “none of that happens. Instead, the remorseful Tyrant abandons his kingdom and returns to his childhood villages. He looks after the cows. He takes pleasure in being a simple man in a simple place. And then, one day, the story-teller returns. They see each other across a crowded stable. Violins swell in the background. They are tearfully reunited. Happily ever after.”

“Mmm.”

“Fine,” I said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “I just hope she gets better at telling stories. Otherwise I may regret my decision.”


End file.
